Random stuff from a software developer

Monthly Archives: May 2011

I’m a huge fan of the app store model that has sprung up over the past few years, and I Apple’s introduction of the iPhone App Store may have been more influential than the iPhone itself. Part of the reason I like it so much is that I think it is a good business model, but it also brings back memories of my Dad and I making applications and sharing them via CompuServe and AOL message boards when I was in Jr High. It is pretty cool to build something that entertains or helps thousands of people across the world (and make a few bucks to fuel your computer habit in the process!)

Nostalgia aside – I’ve released a new Mac (desktop) app to the Mac App Store called ‘Graphical Http Client’. This is a developer tool aimed at helping developers test and interact with REST-based services. Typically, when experimenting with or testing these services, you’ll use a command-line tool (like curl), access it with your browser (if it is a really simple GET request), or write tests to work with these services. My software aims to make this interaction somewhat easier. Some features include:

– Perform any HTTP method (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, etc..)
– Ability to set request headers
– Ability to set authentication (Basic or Digest)
– When you perform the request, you’ll see the HTTP status code, how long the request took, the response headers, and the response body
– Nice formatting for requests that return JSON
– Ability to view HTML responses in a web view
– You can save the response body as a file (useful for when it returns binary data like an image)
– You can also save your requests and open them up later to save time
– Plus a bunch of other stuff